As a young university graduate,
Jac Nasser
faced a choice between two job offers: move to Wollongong to work for BHP, or take a last-minute offer from Ford’s Australian division that would allow him to remain in Melbourne.

Ever the car lover and preferring to stay in his adopted home town, Nasser chose Ford. After moving up the ranks of the US car maker for the next 31 years, he ultimately gained the top job in Detroit.

“I never really had any aspirations to be CEO," Nasser recalled at The Australian Financial Review and Deutsche Bank’s inaugural Conversations Series in Melbourne on Wednesday.

“I loved the company car – I mean, that was the first thing. I loved driving, I loved cars, I loved the mix of engineering and business and marketing and the brand, and the fact these were really interesting products, all the way from financing them to selling them and used cars and every­thing."

Nasser rose from humble beginnings to become a global business leader and ultimately chairman of
BHP Billiton
.

His father, Abdo, now 100 years old, was responsible for the family’s journey to Australia when Nasser was a young boy.

Abdo, who had lived around the world despite his Lebanese roots, had returned to his home country before World War II. Because he could speak English, French and Arabic, Abdo joined the Australian army during the war.

Worried about the postwar situation in the Middle East, he decided to move his young family to Australia because he admired the soldiers he had met during the war – one of whom may have been the father of former prime minister Kevin Rudd, who served in the Nassers’ home town of Amioun in northern Lebanon.

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“We didn’t know anyone here at all and it was tough," says Nasser, who was raised in the then working-class inner-Melbourne suburb of Northcote.

“But it was a country where you could work, and where there was meritocracy. You worked hard, you did well, you looked after your family . . . And Australia, I think, is one of the few countries around the world that gives people that capability and the potential to be the best you possibly can be."

Nasser’s career at Ford, while launched in Australia, included senior positions in Asia, South America, Europe and the US.

One of his favourite things about Ford was his family background was not an issue despite its status as an iconic American company.

“It was never an issue of, ‘You’ve got a funny accent’ or ‘You’ve got the wrong passport’," he says.

“It was a meritocracy and I like that and I think that’s the way countries should be managed and the way companies should be managed." At BHP, the senior executive team is lead by South African-born
Marius Kloppers
and the other top managers include two Australians, two Americans, one Colombian, one Scot and one Canadian.

Nasser believes that to run a company properly, creating the right internal culture is incredibly important. “If you don’t have that you can’t duplicate it by having the right process and the right procedures and the right rules," he says. “There’s a reason why Ford . . . came through the global crisis better than most other automotive companies. There’s a reason."

BHP was similarly unscathed by the global financial crisis, when Nasser was on the board before his elevation to the chairman’s role in March 2010.

Nasser is very enthusiastic about his role at BHP, a provider of the raw materials needed to develop products such as cars. But it’s clear his decision to start his career at Ford rather than BHP allowed the avid car collector to follow his passion for motoring and design.

Take, for example, his 1961 E-type Jaguar. “I have one of those and I love that car for a reason," he says. “They are terrible to drive, but they are very nice to look at."